Innovating Your Blog Posts

In many ways, it’s amazing that so many people still stick with the traditional style of blog post – that is, lots of text.

There’s no need to.

Consider the alternatives, text, video and audio (there are others, but these are the main ones). Which one do you prefer? Which ones works best for your blog?

Text Posts

Personally, I mainly produce text posts. When I’m ‘in the zone’ I can type fast and soon fill up a blog with interesting content. Plus, I know a lot of visitors expect to read when they arrive at a blog.

But, I do occasionally vary this around and there are good reasons for this.

Video Posts

There are different types of these video posts. I’ve experimented, but not on a regular basis.

The easiest way is to produce a screen capture video. Add a title slide, record a voice over and you don’t even have to show your face on camera.

You can also talk directly to the camera, which is easily done with a WebCam or a FlipCam like device. This does take a bit more confidence to pull off well.

Audio Posts

This is something I’d like to try more of. It has the benefits of video posts (speak, rather than type), but doesn’t require anywhere near the effort to sit up. You can record directly through a microphone onto a computer, or even onto a mobile device or cell phone.

The downside is, sometimes people are less inclined to sit and listen to audio (at least video has an additional way to draw your viewers in).

My Conclusions

I’m going to continue to deliver mainly text posts on the blog. They fit my modality of delivery. Plus, even with a video, you do need a bit of text to support it, so you can never totally avoid writing.

But, I will add the occasional video and audio for variety. Videos are great for demonstration and ‘how to’ type tutorials. And creating audios just sounds fun.

What Do You Like?

Do you prefer one of these type of posts to the others? What do you do on your site?